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The Loews New York hotel name will no longer grace Lexington Avenue, The Post has learned.

In a move to further consolidate the upscale status of its growing chain, Loews Hotels, a subsidiary of Loews Corp., has opted to change the name of its large, tourist class inn at Lexington and 51st Street to The Metropolitan Hotel, beginning in October.

The venerable 735-room hotel, the first of many built by Robert and Larry Tisch in 1961, will also receive a three-phase, $17-million facelift over a two-year period.

The first phase, encompassing the building’s public spaces, is expected to be completed before the name change.

Opened originally as the Summit in 1961, it was the first large-scale guest quarters to be built in Manhattan after World War II.

The company changed the name to Loews New York in 1991 after spending $26 million to refurbish the structure.

“We decided it would work better as an independant property,” says Jonathan Tisch, president and CEO of Loews Hotels.

“We have a loyal clientele and this was a good opportunity to commit capital [to the revovation] and run it as a one-of-a-kind place.”

“In terms of the rest of our properties, all the additions to our portfolio now are four and five-star hotels,” Tisch adds.

For the past two years, the company has been in an ambitious growth phase.

During that time, it’s opened the 800-room Loews Miami Beach, the House of Blues hotel in Chicago and the 750-room Portofino, the first of three hotels Loews is building in an 800-acre theme park at Universal Studios in Orlando (the other two are the Hard Rock hotel, opening in January 2001 and the Royal Pacific, which will debut next summer).

The company has also just completed the conversion of a landmark office building in Philadelphia into the latest branch of the chain.